In Quest to Be More Welcoming, Yale Is Severing Ties to a Church

By ALISON LEIGH COWAN

Published: April 12, 2005

After asking God to help two boys with cancer and a family that had just lost an uncle, the congregants of Battell Chapel at Yale University bowed their heads on Sunday and improvised a prayer for another group in need: themselves.

Yale and the 248-year-old congregation are at a crossroads. The university has announced that as of July its chapel will no longer be affiliated with United Church of Christ, the successor to what was once referred to as the Congregational church.

Though the decision is one of several aimed at making the Yale campus more welcoming to all faiths, the church's congregants have criticized the university for turning its back on its Congregational past and leaving them feeling unappreciated and adrift.

Congregational ministers founded Yale College in 1701 to train men to serve church and state, and many of its early presidents also led chapel services. In 1757, Yale formed the current congregation, now known as Church of Christ in Yale. An elaborate Victorian Gothic confection at Elm and College Streets has been its home since 1876.

The affiliation with the United Church of Christ, a liberal Protestant branch, came in 1961, when the congregation was led by the Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr. and other Congregational churches were making the switch.

Despite their long coexistence with Yale, the congregants say their relationship with the university is not protected by a contract. So while many longtime worshipers say the university is within its rights to alter its religious affiliation, they also say they feel betrayed.

''I am very upset that the university, in its arrogance, seeks to dissolve this affiliation, when it was the church that founded this university,'' said Dr. Michael Connair, a resident of Hamden, Conn. He described himself as someone who was born a Catholic but began attending the United Church of Christ three years ago when he found he was ''very much in sync'' with it..

Charles Pillsbury, a congregant for 30 years who is active in the local Green Party, called the university's action ''a sea change.''

But Ryan Hickey, a sophomore in the University Chapel Choir, whose members are paid to sing at the church, confirmed what was apparent from Sunday's crowd of about 100 mostly middle-aged people. ''Not that many students come,'' said Mr. Hickey, who is not a congregant. On any given Sunday, he said, the vast majority of Yale students at the chapel are there to sing in the choir.

Yale said that the recommendation that it disassociate itself from the United Church of Christ was one of several contained in a confidential report prepared in December by a university committee that was asked to look at ''ways to strengthen the growing expressions of religious and spiritual life'' at Yale.

By severing the tie to one denomination, said Martha Highsmith, the university's deputy secretary, ''the university is actually returning to the founding purpose of the church, which was to meet the religious and spiritual needs of students in particular.''

She said that the current congregation, in which she serves as an interim associate pastor, ''has been much more directed toward the outward community if you will. There's been focus on community events and community organizations, and not the same kind of attention to the needs of the university community.''

Certainly, other proposed changes have proved less divisive. For instance, the university won kudos for accepting a recommendation in the December report to provide Muslim students food made in accordance with their dietary customs during Ramadan. Yale has also been prompted to look for space for other groups, like the Buddhists who now meditate in the Battell Chapel.

But the resident congregation feels alienated. It was told it could not even keep the name it has long used, ''the Church of Christ in Yale,'' which is painted in gold by the chapel's entrance, because that belongs to the university.

After services concluded on Sunday, roughly 40 active worshipers lingered behind in a sanctuary that could easily accommodate 800 people and pondered their options over cake and coffee.

The university has said it hopes that many of them will try its soon-to-become ecumenical ( albeit Protestant) Sunday-morning services, which will continue to be conducted by the congregation's senior pastor, the Rev. Frederick J. Streets, who is also employed by Yale as its chaplain.

''This is indeed an exciting time for the Church of Christ in Yale,'' Mr. Streets told the congregation on Sunday. ''I want to underscore that anyone here today, when they come in September, there will be hardly anything noticeably different.''

Other congregations in town, and there are two United Church of Christ churches within 500 yards of the Yale chapel, are just as eager to embrace newcomers. But the current congregation seems inclined to try to stay together and uphold their own traditions.

Their best hope of realizing that goal, they said, was to arrange a merger with another church or to explore an alternate venue.

One tricky issue they considered on Sunday was what to call ''this new old church,'' as Mr. Pillsbury put it. They eventually settled on the name Shalom United Church of Christ. Parishioners explained that the Hebrew word for peace, ''shalom,'' would reaffirm the group's Judeo-Christian heritage and its ongoing commitment to peace and justice.

The English version, said Mr. Pillsbury, ''just didn't do it.''

Mr. Streets extended another olive branch, telling those who leave Yale to ''keep us in your prayers, because we'll be praying for your success.''

Photos: Congregants of the United Church of Christ attended services on Sunday at Battell Chapel at Yale University. Yale has announced that as of July, it will no longer be affiliated with the 248-year-old congregation.; A stained-glass panel at the Yale chapel reflects different faiths. (Photographs by Douglas Healy for The New York Times)(pg. B5)